Hitherto, non-woven fabrics are used for various applications, such as clothes, industrial materials, materials for civil engineering and construction, materials for agriculture and gardening, materials for daily necessities, medical and hygienic materials etc. In particular, as compared with a non-woven fabric composed of staple fibers, a non-woven fabric composed of filaments has higher strength and is higher in productivity. Therefore, a non-woven fabric composed of filaments is more widely used. A non-woven fabric composed of filaments, which is rich in softness and has an excellent hand feeling, has been sought. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. Hei 5-186954 discloses a non-woven fabric produced by a process wherein a sunflower section- type cross section filament is split into two types of fibers: a fiber having a fine fineness and a fiber having a fineness that is three times as fine as that of the former fiber. This type of non-woven fabric has a softness, but it does not have a high bulkiness. Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. Hei 5-140849 discloses a tangled non-woven fabric produced by a process wherein a splittable bicomponent type continuous fiber is split by providing a high pressure membrane liquid flow, and further providing a high pressure membrane liquid flow in order to tangle these split fibers each other. This type of non-woven fabric has a softness, but it lacks in bulkiness. Moreover, in the above mentioned fabrics, the manufacturing step becomes complicated and the manufacturing cost increases.
Moreover, a non-woven fabric is widely used for absorbent articles such as disposable diapers, sanitary napkins, incontinence pads or the like. In general, a non-woven fabric is used as a surface material (a material for the side contacting with the users' skin) of the absorbent article. Therefore, in a case where a less bulky non-woven fabric is used in an absorbent article, there were some disadvantages: that is, a permeability of body fluid such as urine, sweat, blood or the like is not excellent; the bleeding of body fluid from the article is great, the feeling of dryness is deteriorated due to a back flow of body fluid once absorbed by the absorbent article; and the softness is not obtained and a comfortable feeling for users is accordingly deteriorated.
As mentioned above, a non-woven fabric which has a sufficient softness and an excellent hand feeling has been sought, but the non-woven fabric which satisfies the above mentioned both conditions has never been produced.
The object of the present invention is to provide a non-woven fabric having an excellent hand feeling and a sufficient bulkiness. Another object of the present invention is to provide an absorbent article using the above mentioned non-woven fabric, which has an excellent hand feeling and touch, a high permeation speed with respect to fluid to be absorbed, a low exudation property, and a small back flow of the permeated fluid by the absorbent article.